Beta male: a weighty issue

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“You’ve lost weight,” people keep telling me at parties. I should be pleased,
I suppose. Yet they do so in a way that barely even attempts to land in the
territory of complimentary. “Where’s the other half of you gone?” someone
said the other day. “You’re looking so thin!” said another – in precisely
the tone of voice with which you’d utter the phrase: “Did you never notice
what a gigantic great fat face you had?”

“Huh, yes,” I always respond to such polite inquiries. “I think I have a
horrible wasting disease, probably. I expect I shall die shortly.” I